Chicago Tribune Article on NAS Guidebook

Evolution should be taught in public
schools as "the most important concept to modern biology,"
a panel of scientists said Thursday in response to efforts to
keep the subject out of the classroom.

"There is no debate within the
scientific community over whether evolution has occurred, and
there is no evidence that evolution has not occurred," the
National Academy of Sciences said in a guidebook intended for
teachers, parents, school administrators and policymakers.

It says that understanding evolutionary
change is essential to understanding such vital processes as how
bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.

Evolution still causes trouble for
teachers and school officials more than 70 years after John Scopes
was convicted of violating a Tennessee law against teaching it
and more than a decade after the Supreme Court ruled that public
schools cannot teach that God created the universe.

"Many students receive little
or no exposure to the most important concept in modern biology,"
said the guidebook.

An indication of the subject's sensitivity:

The Arizona Board of Education kept
the word "evolution" out of its 1996 science standards
although they specify that students learn "how organisms
change over time in terms of biological adaptation and genetics."
Scientists protested the omission, and a committee will study
the question this year.

The North Carolina House passed a
bill last year requiring that evolution be presented as theory,
not fact. And a Christian publisher in Richardson, Texas, Jon
Buell, says he has been getting plenty of orders for a biology
textbook, "Of Pandas and People," presenting the view
that the world is the way it is by designa term critics say is
code for creationism.

Moreover, a number of university scholars,
including law professor Phillip Johnson of the University of California
at Berkeley and biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University,
have published books and articles challenging evolution. They
suggest that life, from cells on up, is too complex to have evolved.

"Our contention is that there
is reasonable evidence of intelligent design," said Raymond
Bohlin, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology and heads the
Probe Ministries, based in Richardson.

The panel of the National Academy
of Sciences, a federal agency, says opponents of teaching evolution
have quoted prominent scientists out of context to claim that
a consensus is lacking.

Among the points raised by the scientists'
guidebook:

People can believe in God and accept
evolution because "religion and science answer different
questions about the world."

Fewer than half of American adults
believe humans evolved from earlier species and more than half
want creationism taught, according to surveys; "but there
are thousands of different ideas about creation among the world's
people."

Children should be graded on their
understanding of evolution but not penalized for refusing to
believe in it.

And, to set the record straight,
"humans did not evolve from modern apes, but humans and
modern apes shared a common ancestor, a species that no longer
exists."

The guidebook also explains that "theory"
in the scientific sense--an explanation that has been well-substantiated--is
different from the everyday explanation: a guess or hunch. That
helps get teachers and lawmakers off the hook.

"Just this year, a parent asked
me if I was teaching evolution as a theory or as a fact,"
said Elizabeth Carvellas, a biology teacher in Essex Junction,
Vt. "I explained that I taught it as theory. That seemed
to settle that problem."

Barry Raugust, a high school biology
teacher in Wichita, Kan., said he focuses on genetics and change
when talking about evolution. "Regardless of other explanations
of how life began, you have to understand it to understand biology
and make sense out of it," he said. He avoids talking about
human descent from earlier primate species.

"That's way over their head,"
he said. "That's just setting yourself up for arguments,
and that's counterproductive, in my opinion. That might be a good
thing for college or whatever, but at the high school level, it's
overkill."